First something that's most easily cleared: the Publishers Weekly review is just ONE paragraph long, contrasting with the lengthy WaPo rant, and it's not exactly "neutral" either.
To wit, their review as
also shown on Amazon:
The term 'good-faith' is almost inappropriate when applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a bloody struggle interrupted every so often by negotiations that turn out to be anything but honest. Nonetheless, thirty years after his first trip to the Mideast, former President Jimmy Carter still has hope for a peaceful, comprehensive solution to the region's troubles, delivering this informed and readable chronicle as an offering to the cause. An engineer of the 1978 Camp David Accords and 2002 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Carter would seem to be a perfect emissary in the Middle East, an impartial and uniting diplomatic force in a fractured land. Not entirely so. Throughout his work, Carter assigns ultimate blame to Israel, arguing that the country's leadership has routinely undermined the peace process through its obstinate, aggressive and illegal occupation of territories seized in 1967. He's decidedly less critical of Arab leaders, accepting their concern for the Palestinian cause at face value, and including their anti-Israel rhetoric as a matter of course, without much in the way of counter-argument. Carter's book provides a fine overview for those unfamiliar with the history of the conflict and lays out an internationally accepted blueprint for peace.
Wow, what a remarkably
neutral representation of Carter's book, especially in light of Carter's presentation of
two key problems he sees standing in the way of peace, namely that
some Israelis believe they have the right to confiscate and colonize Palestinian land and try to justify the sustained subjugation and persecution of increasingly hopeless and aggravated Palestinians; and that
some Palestinians react by honoring suicide bombers as martyrs to be rewarded in heaven and consider the killing of Israelis as victories. If that isn't hysteric anti-Israeli rhetoric spouted by Carter, I don't know what is!
But, onto
that Washington Post review.
Here's the
opening (!) paragraph from that
fair and balanced Washington Post review, which you seemingly think is "spot on", with my accent on some of the most egregious subjective qualifiers:
Jimmy Carter tells a strange and revealing story near the beginning of his latest book, the sensationally titled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. It is a story that suggests that the former president's hostility to Israel is, to borrow a term, faith-based.
Oh, so Carter is
hostile to Israel now? Wow, what a fair and balanced observation by the reviewer! He must know by looking into Carter's soul.
Here are the
second through fourth paragraphs of that, ahem, review:
On his first visit to the Jewish state in the early 1970s, Carter, who was then still the governor of Georgia, met with Prime Minister Golda Meir, who asked Carter to share his observations about his visit. Such a mistake she never made.
"With some hesitation," Carter writes, "I said that I had long taught lessons from the Hebrew Scriptures and that a common historical pattern was that Israel was punished whenever the leaders turned away from devout worship of God. I asked if she was concerned about the secular nature of her Labor government."
Jews, in my experience, tend to become peevish when Christians, their traditional persecutors, lecture them on morality, and Carter reports that Meir was taken aback by his "temerity." He is, of course, paying himself a compliment. Temerity is mandatory when you are doing God's work, and Carter makes it clear in this polemical book that, in excoriating Israel for its sins -- and he blames Israel almost entirely for perpetuating the hundred-year war between Arab and Jew -- he is on a mission from God.
Oh yeah, we all hate it when Christian zealots creep into government, don't we.
It's interesting that Carter's deep personally moving "Christian" condition is clearly presented as a
negative attribute (I don't think "persecutor" has much in the way of positive connotations, does it now?) to frame Carter's religious inspiration for his politics. Do you really think the reference to "Christian persecutors" would be used by the same author in reference to, oh say, another Christian zealot like George W Bush in connection to Israel? The answer is, of course, in the negative. And the reason for that is
not that Bush would never publicly make any morally inspired remarks in the presence of another government leader (say, like something about looking into a person's soul...) but because Bush is anything but "excoriating Israel". That and only that is the key difference here. In the vein of the current persecuting-Christian-in-chief's rhetoric, you're either with us, or you're with the terrorists, and since Carter says
something critical of
some Israel government leaders he's part of the persecuting posse. Yeehaw!
Should I go on with the fifth paragraph? Why not:
Carter's interest in the Middle East is longstanding, of course; he brokered the first Arab-Israeli peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in 1979, and he has been rightly praised for doing so. But other aspects of his record are more bothersome. Carter, not unlike God, has long been disproportionately interested in the sins of the Chosen People. He is famously a partisan of the Palestinians, and in recent months he has offered a notably benign view of Hamas, the Islamist terrorist organization that took power in the Palestinian territories after winning a January round of parliamentary elections.
Awesome. So the peace deal of 1979 brokered at Camp David is "good" (else it wouldn't deserve to be "righteously praised", no?) while suggesting that it's "famously partisan of Palestinians" when Carter reminds
the Palestinian leaders, Arab government leaders and Israel's political leaders alike (the Christian and persecuting
temerity of doing so!) that acting contrary to the principles underlying the Camp David accord is counterproductive in pursuit of peace. Yes Sir, we have no bananas. Got bias?
The "notably benign view of Hamas" is another gem. After all, they're the
terrorists as we all know; nevermind that they're also receivers of an overwhelming electoral backing of a Palestinian electorate fed up with a lame duck government. In a sense, Palestinians and Iranians (see note at bottom) have gone through a somewhat similar "hardening" stance, in both cases quite arguably under the pressure of the Christian persecutor / crusader Bush's "war on terror"; either way, and be that as it may, the author clearly suggests that it's a bad thing to merely
acknowledge Hamas' existence as a political factor. Hamas and its support base have political and social significance; stating such is not a absolution of their sins. Oops, now I'm being a Christian persecutor. My bad.
Anyway, the rest of Mohammad al-Arabiya's (nyuk, nyuk) review in the Washington Post
can be read here. And what's the relevance of this "reviewer's" name you ask? Good question. I'm fairly sure with your
fair and balanced approach here, that you'll agree it's because the name and political affinity of the author has
nothing whatsoever to do with his fair and balanced piece of partisan drivel.
Now, since you're seemingly troubled that the petition omits the Washington Post as the medium publishing that reviewer's piece, are you also suggesting that that
opinion piece is representative of the WaPo's editorial line? Because if that's what you're suggesting, you're also suggesting that the WaPo is essentially a pro-Israeli rag. Pretty much what Carter said, too:
<snip> because of powerful political, economic, and religious forces in the United States, Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned, voices from Jerusalem dominate in our media, and most American citizens are unaware of circumstances in the occupied territories. At the same time, political leaders and news media in Europe are highly critical of Israeli policies, affecting public attitudes. Americans were surprised and angered by an opinion poll, published by the International Herald Tribune in October 2003, of 7,500 citizens in fifteen European nations, indicating that Israel was considered to be the top threat to world peace, ahead of North Korea, Iran, or Afghanistan.
You're not one of those nasty Israel-hating Christian persecutors, are you?
In case anyone else is interested in a summary of Carter's book, the publisher (Simon & Schuster) has a decent summary available
right here.
*) Edited to add shameless
link to a topic illustrating the byzantine nature of Bush's policy
vis à vis Iran.
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